I'm going fishing Saturday with my wife and daughter. A friend owns a private pond, and it is overloaded with too many fish. So he wants us to come fish it, to get some of the fish out of it. Alot of the fish we will fish out of it will be really small, because of the overcrowding in the pond. We figure on giving the little fish to the chickens, and keeping the bigger fish for ourselves. But what is the best way to serve little fish to chickens? Boiled, broiled, fried, or raw?
I have always just fed it raw... They gobbled it up... I DID TRY to get most of the bones out of it though just cause i worried they'd choke.. OOh i also did scrape off most of the scales too... again... worried about choking..
I would boil them. The bone will be easy to remove and the skin will almost fall off. Course I would recommend an outside cooker if you have one. I would worry about the bones served raw. I am not sure what they can eat outside of bugs and feed. I would like to have some fresh fish...to heck with the chickens.
I give them home-canned. We do lots of salmon fishing and depending on the variety I smoke/can or fresh/can a lot of it. When we get a "smoker" fish that is really rough looking or I don't have room in the brine pans or smoker for anymore I can it for the critters--I don't think the cats are thrilled about having to share "their" fish with the chickens, but the chooks love it. If you have a canner and get enough fish I think it would be a great way to do yours. The bones pretty much disolve during canning so you could just head and gut them before putting them into jars. I skin the fish before canning, but I doubt if it would bother the chooks and skinning little fish is a major pain.
yep a pressure cooker/home canner will soften the bones enough so that you can feed the fish whole (or at least make it easier to remove the bones if u want). i've also read that some people put a splash of apple cider vinegar to help dissolve the calcium in the bones making it more readily available in the cooking liquid.... any way you prepare it, your chickens will love you!
